Picture this: You’re engaged. Your wedding date is looming in the very near future. However, you have not only fallen out of love with your fiancé(e), you also can no longer stand his/her existence anymore. The solution is to cancel the wedding, obviously. The problem, however, is you are barely hitting the middle-class mark and your fiancé(e)’s family planned and made down payments for an upper-class wedding catered for by the fancy kind of businesses that require signed contracts and cancellation fees. Translation – You would have to refund the money they spent thus far and foot the bill for the cancellation fees. What do you do?
You Deserve Each Other tells the story of a couple who find out that they don’t love or even like each other anymore in the final stages of their wedding planning. Told from the point of view of Naomi, the wife-to-be, the book shares the beauty of their nervous and relatable first date before skipping to their present where they can barely stand spending 15 minutes in each other’s presence.
Naomi, the less financially privileged partner in the relationship is determined to not spend the rest of her life with a man whose breathing more or less annoys her. So she comes up with a brilliant plan: getting him to cancel the wedding. Nobody in their right mind expects the jilted partner to pay for wedding cancellations which is just perfect for Naomi who can barely afford to pay for groceries. Her master plan is simple: prank him until he can no longer stand her and has to call off the wedding.
Over the next couple of chapters, Naomi plays every seemingly innocuous prank she can get away with in a bid to exhaust Nicholas, her fiancé and make him call off the wedding. Unfortunately, Nicholas whose parents are paying for the wedding decides to take a page from her book since he doesn’t have an honest relationship with his parents where he can simply express his desire to no longer marry Naomi. What starts off as a mild series of pranks quickly escalates into a full-blown prank war, with each one trying to outdo the other and get them to call off the wedding.
Eventually, and as is the culture in romance novels, what was meant to tear them apart, only serves to unify them. They realize they have only their individual selves to blame for the rift in their relationship. And thus, the journey to reconciliation begins. Well, with a sprinkle of panache.
You Deserve Each Other was an interesting read, primarily for the intriguing storyline. Was it a spectacular read? No. Would I reread it? Unlikely. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Do I think you should give it a try? Definitely. Also, remember to let me know what you think.
PS. Next time you find yourself stuck in a relationship you can’t simply get out of, as unlikely as that might be, feel free to take a page out of Naomi’s book and prank your way out.
